


Annie’s Games

by adroite



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: 70th Hunger Games, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mutual Pining, POV Third Person, Pre-Canon, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:48:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28334895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adroite/pseuds/adroite
Summary: Annie Cresta wins the 70th Hunger Games and is irreversibly changed. So is Finnick Odair.A story in three acts.
Relationships: Annie Cresta/Finnick Odair
Comments: 3
Kudos: 27





	1. The Games

**Author's Note:**

> This is a labor of love but also something that I wrote in a haze in two days. Feedback is welcome, comments are always appreciated, and I definitely hope to write more about these two in the future!

_Welcome to the 70th_ _Annual Hunger Games Tribute Interviews!_

Onstage, she fidgets in her seat, her golden dress shimmering under the bright lights of the stage. Dark hair styled into large, loose curls falls over her shoulders, long bangs pushed aside slightly to reveal soft hazel eyes. The stylists have embraced the fact that she is one of the oldest tributes this year, fitting her with a tight, off-shoulder dress and smudging her eyes with dark eyeliner. She looks at the crowd, searching for her mentors, and her red-painted lips quirk into a small smile when she sees them, the short old lady with her arm around the boy only a year older than the tribute herself is.

She’s visibly nervous, but as the interview goes on, she becomes more confident, her eyes shining as she talks about her home district and opens up about her family. When Caesar asks if she has anyone special waiting for her back in District Four, her face reddens a bit. “No, I don’t think so,” she says. “Unless I have any secret admirers I don’t know about—and now would be a pretty bad time to confess.” She smiles and Caesar chuckles, spurring a small bubbling of laughter from the audience. She looks at the spectators, her eyes instinctively finding her mentors. A radiant smile meets her gaze, and she continues on until her time is up.

Dinner that evening feels lighter than it has in a while. They sit around the table, dining on fine Capitol food, and rewatch the interviews. Annie is flanked by Finnick, her younger mentor, and Cormac, the other District Four tribute. They all laugh at one of the District Seven tributes slipping up and the District Ten girl nearly tripping as she steps up to the stage. Annie tries not to think about how she may have to kill these people—these silly, clumsy kids—in less than a week.

She tries to talk to Finnick about it, but he was a mere kid when he was in the Games himself, so he doesn’t quite understand what it’s like to be eighteen years old, legally old enough to marry or to work on her father’s barge, and be forced to fight a bunch of fresh-faced young teens. Cormac is seventeen, so he understands a bit, but she still feels centuries older than him as he jokes with some of the other tributes during training, throwing around slang she doesn’t understand and smiling with those still-round cheeks.

“You act like you’re eighty,” Finnick says one evening after dinner as they lounge and watch the highlights on the television. “You’re still just a kid, too, Annie.”

“Whatever,” she says. “So are you.”

“We all are.” He gives her a long look, and they don’t say any more, just sit side by side and watch all the children’s faces flitting past on the screen, bracing themselves for the days to come.

It hurts Finnick to send her off. This is only the second pair of tributes he’s mentored, but he and Annie have grown unusually close, and despite his faith in her, she’s not exactly the prototype of a victor. She is taller and older than many of the tributes, but she’s a slight girl whose main skills lie in tying nets and spearing fish. She refuses a teary goodbye as they send her off, simply hugging Finnick and Mags and giving them each a kiss on the cheek as they part ways.

She’s surprisingly enduring. It comes as no shock to Finnick when she and Cormac form an alliance. A few days pass before they really begin to struggle. He’s trying his hardest to get a sponsor to send them food so that they don’t have to attempt to use their fishing skills on land animals, but they’re not the most popular or charismatic tributes District Four has had. Eventually, they’re forced to hunt. Cormac wants to go alone while Annie stays to watch their encampment, but she refuses, wielding a spear she managed to grab from the Cornucopia as she trails behind him.

They’re not good hunters. Finnick would laugh if he wasn’t so afraid for them. He sees the shake in Cormac’s hand as he ties a makeshift snare, the way Annie’s movements are slowed, fatigued. They need to eat. He thinks they might be coming across a bit of luck when the underbrush rustles; it seems as if an animal is approaching. Instead, it’s the District Two boy, emerging from the nearby bushes. The two of them hardly have time to react before he’s swinging a short sword that makes contact with Cormac’s neck and tears his head from his body in a violent spray of red.

Annie stands frozen with shock, covered in her fellow tribute’s blood, as the District Two boy assesses his handiwork. He looks up at Annie, taking a step forward and raising his sword again, but she reacts quickly, piercing his chest with her spear. He drops the sword to the forest floor with a soft _thud_ and falls to his knees, clutching fruitlessly at the spear in his chest as he lays dying next to Cormac’s headless corpse. Annie stares down at them both, wide-eyed and still spattered with drying blood. The cannon shots in the distance don’t faze her, but they make Finnick’s ears ring.

He can’t stomach watching her any longer, can’t stand that horrified stare. He buries his head in his hands, taking a few deep breaths, until he feels someone nudging his arm. He looks up and sees Mags looking at him with a bittersweet smile. An offer from a sponsor has come in—food for Annie. He swallows the lump in his throat as he accepts it, hoping the tiny silver parachute floating down will break her from her trance.

At first, she flinches when the gift comes. After a few moments of staring at this, too, she kneels silently on the forest floor and unwraps it. Finnick can tell immediately that it’s from District Four. There’s a small container of water so that she can wash before she eats, and she does, the water slowly turning pink as she wipes the blood from her hands. Then she unwraps the food—salted bread, lentils, roasted fish. Her eyes brim with tears as she eats, slowly, not at all with the voracity of someone who has gone days without a full meal. Finnick finds himself tearing up as well as he realizes what this food represents—a condolence meal sent by her figurative neighbors in District Four. Annie is mourning Cormac, and so are they.

She doesn’t function quite the same after that. She’s silent and moves stiffly, retrieving her spear and using what little water she has left to clean it off. She returns to the encampment and moves it to a more remote area, remaining there and surviving off leftovers from the condolence meal. The gamemakers don’t cover her as often, now—there’s nothing sensational about a broken girl huddled in a remote camp. Sometimes they film at her night, sleeping restlessly, but it’s mostly just to remind viewers that she’s still alive.

There’s a lull in the Games, and Finnick feels a sense of dread deep in his chest, knowing they’re likely devising something to torture the tributes. Sure enough, a few nights after Cormac’s death, the sleeping tributes wake to the earth shaking. The quake is short and relatively harmless, but soon after, a layer of water begins flooding their encampments, streaming from a dam that was broken by the tremors. Annie takes a bit longer to stir than the others, and by the time she does, the water is up to her knees. She quickly gathers the little supplies that can be savaged and heads for higher ground, familiar with floods and how to handle them.

Evidently, certain tributes are not. A group of Career tributes try to follow the water to its source. They don’t have the wise idea to turn back until they’re up to their chests, and by the time they begin swimming in the opposite direction, they’re fatigued enough to wear out and drown within twenty-four hours. Annie has staked out on a hill as the water rises, but she’s vulnerable—one tribute began approaching from the distance, and she threw her spear at them and killed them instantly. Now she is without defenses, waiting atop a gradually shrinking hill for someone else to come pick her off as cannon shots fire off every few hours.

Before another tribute can find her, the water rises and subsumes the hill, and she is forced to swim to find somewhere else to wait out the flood. The arena is eerily silent as she paddles around, looking for peaks of land cresting above the water. For once, she feels in her element, swimming around like this. She hears a few cannon shots and assumes that more of the other tributes must have drowned, but she has no clue who is left or how many. She’s lost her grip on reality a bit since Cormac was killed.

She’s growing tired, and she knows she’ll need to rest soon, when a voice calls out, “Ladies and gentlemen, your victor of the 70th Annual Hunger Games—Annie Cresta!”

Annie looks up for the source of the noise, her eyes wide and terrified, but only sees a hovercraft descending, a ladder dropping to meet her in the water. She shakes her head as she grips the ladder rungs, her wet and pruned fingers barely able to cling to the smooth metal. “No, no,” she whispers to herself. “No.”

Finnick can’t tell what Annie’s saying as she’s lifted into the hovercraft, but he’s not quite paying attention, anyway. He and Mags are crying, clinging to one another, cheering for their unlikely victor, as shocked as they are relieved. Surely, the gamemakers didn’t realize what they were doing by flooding the arena with a District Four tribute still in the fight. Finnick is positive that they’re quite disappointed with this lukewarm outcome, but all he cares about is that Annie is alive.

She’s still damp and zoned-out when they’re reunited with her, but they both hug her tightly. Annie doesn’t reciprocate, simply staring into the distance as Mags and Finnick congratulate her. Her stylists and prep team enter the room soon after, crowding her and pushing her mentors aside as they dive in to begin preparing her for the post-Games interview. Mags and Finnick clutch one another’s hands and talk in low voices at the side of the room, but their attention is violently pulled back to Annie when an ear-splitting shriek breaks through the gentle, celebratory bustle of the room.

Hands over her ears, knees on the floor, Annie is screaming. Her prep team stands back, looking at her in horror, not one of them bothering to do anything. Almost angry, Finnick rushes forward, pushing aside a member of the prep team, and kneels in front of Annie, reaching for her. He expects her to push him away, but she leans into his touch as he takes her by the shoulders. “Annie,” he says softly. “Annie. It’s me. It’s Finnick.”

Her scream dies down and she looks up at him, eyes filled with tears. Her gaze is different than he remembers, not the sharp, clever look of the girl he mentored for weeks. It lacks clarity, and he’s not even sure if she’s looking at him or staring into the distance. He brings a hand to her face and asks her what’s wrong. She takes a slow, shallow breath, and then says, “Is this real? Did I win?” It’s similar to what Finnick and Mags were asking each other as Annie was being lifted from the arena, but it lacks the wonder, the relief, the celebratory tone. She sounds terrified.

“You did, Annie. You won,” he says, unsure what else to tell her. Her gaze wavers for a moment, and then she bursts into tears. Finnick wraps her in a hug, and she slumps against him. He looks up at the prep team. “This can wait,” he tells them.

“It can’t!” says a frantic, thin man named Artemon with purple skin and a high-pitched voice. “The interview is _tomorrow_ —”

“It can wait,” Finnick says firmly. Artemon responds with a helpless squeak as the other two members of the prep team usher him out of the room, all three of them ogling at Annie as she weeps in Finnick’s arms. He pulls her closer, rubbing her back as she shakes with sobs. Mags and Finnick share a glance over Annie’s shoulder, both of them suddenly realizing that this victory may have cost much more than any of them anticipated it would.


	2. Victory Tour

Everyone expects her to get better after a good night’s sleep, but she doesn’t.

The post-Games interview is a near-wreck, with Annie sitting catatonic the entire time and refusing to look directly at Caesar or the cameras. The silvery-blue dress that clings to her like water is gorgeous, but it looks wrong and rumpled as she slumps in her seat with her hands folded motionlessly. As the audience reacts to the highlights of the Games, she stares listlessly at the floor. When Cormac’s death scene appears, her eyes widen. Finnick is afraid she’ll start screaming again, but instead she simply covers her ears and squeezes her eyes shut. The audience sighs sadly, and Caesar looks at her with a practiced sympathy, tapping her arm when the scene has passed. She uncurls, but she’s even less present now than she was before, unresponsive when the audience cheers for her inevitable victory as it’s projected across the massive screen.

Clearly one night wasn’t enough for her to come back, but everyone is certain she’ll feel better in a few days, particularly once they arrive home in District Four. Everyone is wrong. Finnick feels as if he’s the only one who sees this for what it is—not a temporary response, not an attention grab. Annie has been deeply, permanently changed by her time in the arena. He can’t say that he knows exactly how she feels, but he thinks he’s the closest to understanding.   


She sleeps in Finnick’s guest bedroom while he helps her family move her belongings from her old home to her new one in the Victor’s Village. She lives right next door to Finnick now, the most recent victor from District Four besides herself. They’re towering, ornate houses with a view of the sea, simultaneously gorgeous and haunting. Sometimes the crashing of the waves against the shore just outside his window is the only thing that helps Finnick find sleep at night.

It’s a warm evening when he brings Annie over to her new house for the first time. He and her family have worked tirelessly to make it welcoming for her—filling it with old decorations, trinkets, soft blankets that her mother has made, photos of her family hanging on the walls. Her father even cooks one of her favorite meals for dinner that night, and her siblings are sitting around in the living room chatting with her mother and Mags as they wait for her to arrive. Annie still doesn’t react when she steps inside, only heaving a sigh and looking at Finnick a bit desperately. They’ve started to communicate in their own silent language, and he vaguely understands this to mean, “Not here, not now, not with them.”

“Let’s go see your new bedroom,” Finnick says, grinning. Her mother stands to join them, but Finnick subtly shakes his head ‘no’ as he leads Annie upstairs on his own, leading her to the room at the end of the hall.

There’s a wide floor-to-ceiling window that opens up to a view of the sea. The sun is just setting over the ocean, filling Annie’s room with warm orange light. A large bed with her old quilt sits on one side of the room, and an ornate wardrobe filled with her old clothes on the other. She walks in, sitting on the side of the bed and burying her head in her hands. Finnick sits next to her carefully.

“We’re home now. I’m safe. Real or not real?” she says quietly. This is another thing they’ve begun since the train ride back to District Four—real or not real. Finnick suggested it to help Annie sort out her blurred memories, nightmares, and delusions from reality.

“Real,” Finnick says, wrapping an arm around her and allowing her to lean into him.

“I’m still crazy and I can’t figure out how to fix it,” she says. Finnick expects her to tack on a “real or not real”, but she seems certain of this fact.

“You’re not crazy,” he says. “Everyone comes out of the Hunger Games messed up in some way. It’s not always physical. But we’ll get you better, I promise.”

“Okay,” she mumbles, leaning into him even more. Finnick tries to keep from blushing as he pulls her closer. It’s been strange training tributes at all, but particularly one that was so close in age to him. They’ve gotten closer than mentor and tribute, closer than friends even. He still wouldn’t say it out loud, but Finnick would do anything to make Annie happy. She’s all he’s been focused on since the Games ended. From the outside, it just looks like a caring mentor looking after his mentally unstable victor. Both of them know that their relationship has grown into something a little different, though they’re both too young and too afraid to name it. Annie says she’ll be ready to start thinking about it once she recovers from the Victory Tour in six months, but Finnick’s not sure he’ll be ready by then. He’s not sure if he’ll ever be ready—if Annie will ever want him for who he truly is.

They sit there for a while longer until the room grows dark and Finnick stands up to turn on a light. “Are you ready?” he says, standing near the doorway. Annie sits up a little straighter, musters a weak smile as she pulls her messy dark hair over her shoulder.

“Sure,” she says. “Thanks to you.”

They head back downstairs, and Annie manages to pull herself together just enough to have dinner with her family and catch up with them. She still seems a bit unhinged—laughing at odd times in the conversation, occasionally trailing off and zoning out, but her family doesn’t seem to mind. They’re glad to have her back at all.

Over the next few months, Finnick sees Annie almost every day. She sleeps an inordinate amount, so Finnick will usually come over to clean up and make lunch for when she wakes up a bit after noon. She always accepts it wordlessly but with a gracious smile, and they eat in silence together as they sit on the back patio and watch the ocean. Occasionally they’ll go down to the beach, mostly lounging, because Annie can’t quite bring herself to step back into the water yet. The warm sand and salty breeze are therapeutic though, Finnick can tell. Her eyes grow a bit clearer and she smiles a bit more whenever they’re at the beach together.

Finnick urges her to pick up a hobby, and she decides that she wants to try pottery. He goes down to the marketplace and brings back a cheap pottery wheel, a few blocks of clay and some sculpting tools, and the two of them spend the afternoon molding the stubborn bricks into ugly, lumpy shapes. He ends up with nothing more than a misshapen hunk of clay, but Annie manages to start throwing and make a wobbly bowl. Neither of them looks pretty, but at least Annie’s creation may be functional. Finnick can tell that she’s chosen a good skill to hone. He continues bringing her more supplies and some glazes over the next few weeks, even poking around to see if there are any potters in the surrounding neighborhoods that would be willing to come and give her lessons. Eventually, she’s making things that, though rudimentary, are fully functional and genuinely gorgeous.

“Do you know what I started working on after my Games?” he says one day as he sits and watches Annie’s clay-covered fingers shape a small cup.

“Fishing and more fishing,” she offers. She glances up at him and her lips quirk into a half-smile. “Flirting.” Finnick feels a pang of hurt at her last suggestion, but he grins back nonetheless.

“No. Dancing, actually. I would lock myself in my room, put on folk songs, and just dance until I was too tired to do anything but sleep. Eventually I decided I should actually take lessons, and I think I’m decent at it now, if I do say so myself.” He’s proud to elicit an actual laugh from Annie, one that seems to clear a bit of the cloudiness in her gaze. She lifts her foot from the pottery wheel’s pedal, wipes her hands on her apron, and stands up. She walks out of the room they’ve designated for her art and comes back with a small radio she plucked from the kitchen. Finnick raises an eyebrow.

“Prove it,” she says. A challenge.

Finnick smiles as he stands up, crossing the room and taking the radio from her. He flicks it on and flips past the usual broadcast channels until he gets to the few generic music channels they have access to, fiddling around until he settles on something he feels comfortable with—a slow, folksy District Four song. He steps into the most spacious area of the room, starting a count and waiting a few beats before he begins dancing. It’s mostly footwork, something rather simple, but he hasn’t danced in a while, so he’s grateful it isn’t easy to mess up and make a fool of himself.

A tentative smile spreads across Annie’s face, and he beckons for her to join him. She furrows her brows, seeming hesitant at first, but he reaches out and takes her hand, eliciting a surprised giggle as he wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her into the mid-tempo step. She fumbles quite a few times at first, but eventually picks up on his footwork and starts stepping in time with him. As the song picks up, the two of them keep moving, grinning and laughing breathlessly as they cling to one another and dance carefully around the room.

Finnick misses a beat and slips, stumbling back into a desk scattered with various sculpting tools. He catches himself but lets go of Annie, who falls forward onto him and wraps her arms around him to prevent herself from tumbling to the floor. She looks up at him with wide eyes, and then they both burst into laughter, Finnick wrapping his arms around Annie and pulling them both upright as the song fades to an end. He looks down at her, their faces mere inches apart, and realizes he’s flushed completely red. He wants to back away, but the table is right behind him and there’s nowhere to go. Annie seems to get the message and pulls back, her smile softening as she tucks a strand of wild hair behind her ear.

“Okay,” she says. “I believe you now.”

They have quite a few brilliant moments like this, but most of Annie’s days leading up to the Victory Tour are spent in a fog of sorrow and waking nightmares. Finnick can’t lie to her that it isn’t awful to be paraded around the districts and faced with the families whose loved ones you’ve killed—whether directly or not. All he can do is stay by her side and pull her away from the edge if he senses she’s teetering. A month before the Tour, he begins sleeping at her house, separated from her by a single wall in the guest bedroom. He sleeps lightly, woken every few nights by her sobs as she claws her way to consciousness from the nightmares of the Games that grip her.

He’s familiar with such dreams. They didn’t bother him much after his own Games, but their presence grew in the years that followed. Images of his youthful self, projected across a screen piercing other children with his trident and spilling blood relentlessly, served as a backdrop for more sinister memories. It’s what came after the Games that haunts him the most.

At first, he’s not sure exactly which images plague Annie. Most everyone blames her nervous breakdown on having seen Cormac beheaded just inches away from her, but no one can say for sure. Even Finnick, who seems to know her so well, isn’t sure until the mumbling starts.

When Annie wakes in the middle of the night, Finnick has a routine—he rouses himself, rubs the sleep away, and approaches her door, knocking softly three times. He waits for a cue to enter and then steps inside, shutting the door behind him and approaching her bed, sitting on the edge and reaching out a hand. Usually, she intertwines her fingers with his and they sit there in silence for a while as she empties herself of tears. If she’s still struggling to fall back asleep, Finnick will lie down beside her, wrapping an arm around her and waiting for her breathing to even out so that he can go back to his own bed.

One night that he lays with her, he hears something, a soft noise, coming from her side of the bed. He realizes after a few moments that she’s speaking, and he tries to focus on what she’s saying. It was mere words at first, but now he can make out phrases—sentences even. The first full sentence he’s able to discern is, “He was only fourteen.”

This one puzzles Finnick. Initially, he assumes she’s talking about Cormac, but Cormac was seventeen when he died. He does a bit of research during the day to try and figure out who she might be remembering, and eventually he comes across a list of the tributes that notes all their ages, and one sticks out to him—the District Two boy, only fourteen years old. Finnick’s mind immediately flashes not to Cormac’s beheading, but to the moment directly afterwards, when Annie pierced the boy’s heart with her spear.

He makes out a few more sentences over the next few weeks—“I could have stopped it. It was so cold. I feel like I’m floating.” Not all of it makes complete sense, but it sounds like she’s weaving a narrative, like she’s trying to tell someone a story about her time in the Games. Perhaps she’s trying to tell Finnick.

One morning, just five days before they’re expecting her prep team to swoop in and the Victory Tour to begin, they’re having breakfast together. Finnick has fried up eggs and Annie has made them both toast with butter, and they mop up their runny yolks with the bread crusts as they sit silently on the back porch together, each wrapped in cardigans to brace themselves against the cool breeze off the ocean.

“Do you hear me?” Annie says. It comes out of nowhere, and Finnick is a bit shocked. Their breakfasts are usually eaten in silence. Anyone else might not understand exactly what she means by this, but Finnick has spent so much time joined to her lately that he gets it almost immediately.

“I do,” he says. “Do you want me to hear you?”

The mumbling, he knows, is what she means. She nods, but then, as if afraid he didn’t see, turns to him and says, “Yes. I don’t know how else to say it. I can’t just say it outright.”

“I know what you mean,” he says, smiling sadly and reaching for her hand. She takes it, her fingers slipping through his. He has the urge to say more, to mumble his own incoherent phrases and string together a picture of his own trauma for her, but he can’t bring himself to do it. He simply clings to her hand and gazes out at the waves crashing against the shore under the steely gray sky.

The Victory Tour is a blur of dull, wintery towns and solemn faces. On the train, Finnick continues his routine of lying next to Annie to help her fall asleep and then creeping back to his own bed in the early hours of the morning, stealing a few hours of sleep before they’re on to the next crowded square to face another group of mourning families. Things go more smoothly than anyone attending to Annie expects. She’s not fully present at any of the Districts, but they don’t expect her to be—she’s only there to be paraded around. All they need is for her to not cause a scene, which she manages up until the very last leg of the Tour.

Finnick feels terrible for not anticipating that District Two will be difficult for her. It doesn’t hit him until the morning of, when he’s torn away from his own routine by frustrated shouting coming from where the prep team is getting Annie ready. He peeks into the room curiously and sees the three members of her prep team arguing animatedly while Annie sits in the corner naked and curled into a tight ball. Her face is buried in her knees and her hands are pressed over her ears.

“What’s going on?” he says firmly, stepping into the room. One of the women shrieks when she sees Finnick, rushing to grab a thin white robe and toss it over Annie’s curled-up body. “Well?” he says, putting his hands on his hips and mustering his toughest expression.

“She won’t move,” Artemon says helplessly. “We’ve been trying to get her ready for almost thirty minutes now, but she won’t even get dressed.”

“Get out,” Finnick says, waving the prep team away. They always seem flustered and upset by being forced to bend to his will, but they shuffle away anyway, leaving him and Annie alone in the train car. He kneels next to her, reaching out tentatively and adjusting the robe so that it drapes over her shoulders and mostly covers her exposed skin. He pulls her hair back from her face slightly. “Annie,” he says softly. “It’s Finnick. You’re safe here.”

Slowly, she lowers her hands and looks up at him, her eyes terrified and her face streaked with tears. “I’m in District Two,” she says shakily. “Real or not real?”

“Real,” he says tentatively. “But I’m here too. We’ll be quick. And I’ll be there next to you the entire time.” This doesn’t seem to convince her at first, but Finnick grabs the comfortable red dress that the stylists picked out for her and coaxes her off the ground, getting her ready one step at a time. He tries to weave in jokes and comforting references, comparing the color of the dress to a particularly ugly vase Finnick made when they were first learning to use glazes. It doesn’t quite elicit a laugh, but it gets her up and moving, and that’s all he really needs right now. “There,” he says, standing next to her in front of the full body mirror. “Now, do you mind if the prep team comes in to do your hair and makeup? I could try, but your stylists would probably be appalled.” At this, she laughs slightly, and Finnick calls for the prep team to rejoin them, squeezing her hand before he steps back and lets them go to work.   


As they stand in the square and look out at the steely-faced District Two residents, a few silent tears roll down Annie’s cheeks, but she holds herself together otherwise. It isn’t until they’re in the train rushing towards District One that she breaks down, falling into a screaming fit similar to the one she had right after winning the Games. She’s left alone with Finnick again, who leads her to bed and holds her until she’s hoarse from wailing.

The feast in District Four at the end of it all should be a welcome reprieve, and in a way, it is. Tables laden with roasted fish and salted bread, gifts for all the less privileged members of the District, family and friends gathered drinking and laughing and celebrating together. Finnick remembers his feast as a daze of love and joy, but Annie’s is a bit different. Everyone is trying, but the worry is evident in their faces: their Annie Cresta has changed. She’s not the bright, sharp fisherman’s daughter they once challenged to arm wrestling contests in pubs and stopped to chat with on their way to work. She’s a distant, glazed-over girl who clings to Finnick with a frightened look for almost the entire celebration. Even her family seems a little broken when they try to talk to her, try to make their way through that fog to find the daughter or sister they once knew.

She doesn’t speak a full sentence the entire day, not until they’re back at her place in the Victor’s Village and they’re winding down, getting ready for bed. Finnick is drying his hair after a shower and Annie sits perched on the edge of the living room couch, looking absentmindedly out the window, when she says, “This is the only safe place.” No “real or not real”. Annie is convinced of this.

“District Four?” Finnick says, draping his towel over his shoulder as he sits down on the other end of the couch. Annie shakes her head and drags her gaze over to him, looking him in the eyes with a clarity he hasn’t seen in her face in ages.

“This house,” she says. “Between these four walls. With you. This is the only place that I feel… like myself.” Finnick isn’t sure what to say to this. It’s true that he basically lives here now—his family is still posted up at his Victor’s Village home next door, having moved there from their low-income neighborhood five years ago when he won, but he’s been sleeping and living here almost full-time now. This is usually the age when people move out of their parents’ homes anyway—Annie has. He’s glad that she feels safe here, of course. But it shouldn’t be the only place she feels safe.

“You’ll feel that way about more places as time goes on,” he reassures her. “Your family’s home. The marketplace. The beach.” She nods slightly at this last suggestion. “Even places outside the District, I bet. The farther you get from the Games, the safer you’ll feel. I promise.”

She shakes her head, her brows furrowing, and Finnick seems to recognize that girl he met over six months ago, that stubborn, soft-spoken girl with a quick sense of humor and a quiet, discerning gaze. “No,” she says. “It goes on and on. I’ll have to go there every year, to the Capitol, I’ll have to mentor other tributes—”   


“You won’t,” he says firmly. “Trust me. Mags and I will be the mentors for as long as we live. You’ll never have to worry about that.”

“And if one of you dies?” she says, quirking an eyebrow. He’s at a loss for words, but her smile quiets him, tells him that he doesn’t need to respond. “Thank you, Finnick,” she says, looking back out the window. “For everything.”

Inexplicably, Finnick’s eyes fill with tears. In his silence, Annie glances back over at him, and noticing his tears, scoots over to the other end of the couch and wraps her arms around him. He leans into her touch, burying his face in her soft brown hair as he lets himself cry. They sit there like that for a while, curled up together, even once Finnick has cried all his tears. The only sounds in the house are the gentle hum of the heater and the faint sound of waves crashing against the shore from outside. When they finally pull away from one another, warm and sticky and exhausted, it’s past midnight. Finnick doesn’t even bother sleeping in the guest bedroom that evening—he climbs into bed with Annie, draping an arm over her and nestling into her warmth as they drift off to sleep together.


	3. Sea

They mainly deal in silence and shared meals over the next few weeks. It’s too cold to go to the beach, so they sit on the porch wrapped in blankets and eat together, occasionally sharing glances and smiling every so often. Annie spends most of her time in her art room, throwing pottery with the door open and music playing from the living room as Finnick practices his dancing openly. Sometimes she takes a break, comes out with hands still caked in clay and just leans against the wall and watches him. He finds himself stumbling a bit more with her eyes trained on him.

It is over these next few weeks, stretching into months, that something truly terrifying begins to overwhelm Finnick. Despite the relative peace he’s found in his new home with Annie—he finally moved over all his things from the other house—something has been creeping up on him. That inkling of affection that he began to feel for her so long ago, that intense caring that he’s expressed towards her since the moment she entered the arena, has morphed into something entirely out of his control.

Finnick is in love.

Perhaps if he were a normal twenty-year-old, this wouldn’t be a problem. If he weren’t traumatized; if his personal life wasn’t so publicized; if his body were his own—maybe then he could love unabashedly, give himself completely to someone and not have to worry about the consequences. But frankly, loving Annie scares him. The fact that she may love him back scares him even more.

They both tiptoe around it for a while. It’s easy at first. Annie pretends not to see Finnick’s loving glances as they have their breakfast together, and Finnick ignores the way his heart rate speeds up when Annie places her hands over his to show him how to make a bowl on the pottery wheel. He doesn’t change his nightly routine of coming in when he hears her wake and lying with her until she falls back asleep, but he does become more self-conscious. Does he stink from swimming in the ocean earlier? Is he too sweaty? Can she feel the rapid thump of his heart in his chest as he holds her?

It doesn’t help that most people already assume that their relationship is something more than it is. Finnick has dinner with his family a few nights a week, and every time, without fail, his mother asks him if Annie is his girlfriend yet. He always tries to deflect with jokes about how he can’t be tied down, but he knows that his mom and sisters see right through him. If only he could be as transparent with them as they already assume he is.

Annie’s family isn’t much better. They come around less often—inviting Finnick and Annie for dinner or coming to spend the day in the Victor’s Village around once or twice a month at most. When they do, however, her parents always thank him profusely for looking after her. Once, her father even implied that he was waiting for Finnick to ask for his blessing to marry Annie, which made Finnick go red for the next three hours at least.

If Annie notices, she doesn’t seem to care. She’s always a little more distant when they’re around, retreating into herself a bit more than usual. Finnick suspects it might have less to do with her family themselves and more to do with what they represent—life before the Games, a normalcy she’ll never regain. Living on the beach and making pottery with Finnick between panic attacks and waking nightmares is her new normal, and her family will never quite understand that. She’s always drained when the family leaves or when she and Finnick return from their lavish house downtown, collapsing in bed without showering or even saying goodnight.

By the time it’s warm enough for them to spend all day on the beach again, the tension is almost unbearable. They sit in the sand together without speaking—silence is normal for them, but now it’s a heavy silence, loaded with things unsaid. One day, Finnick decides to swim while Annie sits on the shore and watches him. He’s shocked when she gets up and starts walking towards the water. She doesn’t quite get in, just stands and lets the waves wash over her feet, but it’s the closest she’s gotten to the ocean since she was forced to swim for her life in the Games. Finnick feels a swell of pride as he swims back to the shore and wades over to her.

“Do you want to come in?” he says, holding out a hand for her. She looks at him hesitantly for a long moment, and then nods almost imperceptibly, reaching out and taking his hand in hers. They wade out slowly together, stopping when the water reaches their thighs, and she looks up at Finnick with an excited grin.   


“It feels so much nicer than I remember,” she says softly, reaching for Finnick’s other hand so that they’re holding onto one another tightly as the water sloshes against their legs. It’s a little cold, but the sun beating down on them makes it more refreshing. They stand there for a while, holding hands and bracing themselves against the cool water, when Annie wordlessly lets go of Finnick. She wades out a bit farther, shivering slightly as the water reaches her hips, then her chest. Soon she begins swimming, and Finnick follows, ready to swoop in and carry her back to shore if anything goes wrong.

For once, nothing does. They swim together for a while, making their way out past the biggest waves and simply floating together, occasionally disappearing underwater or chasing each other around. They grow tired after a while, but even then, they keep swimming until the sun is dipping in the sky, when they finally let the waves carry them back to shore.

They sit in the sand together, faces aching from smiling, sipping cold water from bottles and watching the sunset together. Finnick wraps Annie in the towel he brought for himself, but she refuses to let him shiver, and she wraps it around both of them so that they’re huddled together, salty skin pressed against one another.   


“Thank you,” Annie says quietly after a long silence.

“For what?”

Annie gazes out at the sea. “I don’t think I ever could have gone into the ocean again if not for you. I haven’t felt this much like myself in so long.” Finnick looks over at her, expecting to see tears or that distant stare, but she looks strong and clear, like she did before the Games. She looks over and meets his gaze, and he sees the orange and purple of the sunset reflected in her eyes. “I love you, Finnick,” she says.

There are a million things wrong with this, Finnick knows, things he can’t even express to her. But he’s wrapped up in the moment, not thinking about the Capitol or President Snow or anything but that soft, genuine look on her face. “I love you too,” he says, reaching up to brush away a few grains of sand that are sticking to her jaw. She places a hand over his, pulling him in, and presses a kiss to his lips.

Finnick leans into it, kisses her back softly. They sit like that for so long, curled up next to each other on the sand, kissing one another gently and fervently and occasionally pulling away for a breath. It isn’t until the sky is dark and dotted with stars that they pull apart for good and decide to go back to the house together.

Annie runs a shower to wash off the sand and saltwater, and she invites Finnick to join her. His face flushes red. “I’ll use my own bathroom,” he says. Annie laughs.

“I still don’t know where they got this idea that you’re a big flirt,” she says, pulling a towel out of her linen closet. She doesn’t say who  _ they  _ are, but Finnick knows, and he tries to keep his face calm, to not show his pain at the notion that  _ their  _ idea of him might have influenced her at all. “I’ll see you for dinner.” She disappears into the bathroom, and Finnick sits in her room numbly for a while before he drags himself to his own bathroom and takes a long shower, scrubbing off the day.

Dinner should be nice. Annie helps him cook, and she’s fully present, humming along to the music on the radio as she glides around the kitchen in an oversized t-shirt and her underwear. Finnick can’t manage to pull himself out of his own head, though, even as they sit across the table from each other and Annie looks at him with a calmly amused expression the entire time.

They don’t go through the usual evening routine that night—Annie pulls Finnick into bed with her before he can even make it to his own room. He lays down next to her, tentatively wrapping an arm around her, as the two of them try to drift off to sleep. They’re both full and clean, and Annie is happy. He hopes she won’t have any nightmares tonight. She certainly isn’t mumbling under her breath to try and share her trauma with him. As he holds her and looks over her shoulder, it hits him that he could do just that—whisper to her in the comfort and safety of her bedroom at night, tell her the things he’s too afraid to say in the light of day.

But Annie is happy. He would never be able to forgive himself if he disrupted that. So instead of sharing his pain and hesitation, he pulls her a little closer and buries his face in her hair, clinging to her until they both fall asleep.

The next few days pass in a haze of happiness for Annie—hugging Finnick from behind while he’s cooking, dancing with him in the living room, stealing kisses every few hours. Finnick wants to wallow in her happiness, to let go of all his anxiety and overthinking and let that golden joy wash over him. The closer they get, however, the more his fear mounts. It culminates when they’re getting ready for bed one evening.

Annie has just showered and now she sits at her vanity in a linen robe, patting her hair dry and working mousse through her dark curls. Finnick is making the bed, lighting a stick of lavender incense that he knows calms her down enough to slip away to sleep quickly. He makes his way over to the large window at the other end of the room, drawing the curtains shut like he does every night, when Annie appears next to him. As he turns and sees her, he smiles, welcoming her inevitable embrace. They hug for a long moment in front of the half-closed curtains, and when Annie pulls away, she kisses him.

“You’re too good to me,” she says softly, reaching up and running her fingers through Finnick’s hair.

“You deserve it,” he whispers back, kissing her forehead. She kisses his lips again, pulling him a bit closer, resting her hands on his waist. As they kiss each other slowly, her hands move, trailing up and resting on his chest. Finnick is still in his clothes from the day, and Annie's thin fingers find the buttons of his shirt and begin undoing them slowly. When Finnick feels the cool air hit his chest and realizes what she’s doing, he pulls away a bit too quickly, taking a step back and almost stumbling.

They look at each other, both their expressions a bit shocked. “I’m sorry,” Annie stumbles out, her face slowly turning red. “I was just trying to—to help—”

“It’s fine,” Finnick says, his voice a bit firmer than he intended. He buttons his shirt back up with fumbling fingers, unsure why. Annie has seen him shirtless countless times before—all of Panem has. But that’s the issue, isn’t it? His body isn’t his own. Annie stands still, her face still flushed, and Finnick steps towards her again, holding onto his shirt. “I’m… not ready yet.” His voice is careful and measured.

Annie nods quickly, then hesitates. “Not ready for what?” she says, then follows up, “I just want to know. So I can respect it.” Her hands are clasped near her chest and she stares at Finnick with a sharp, worried look.

He crumples under the pressure of her gaze, sighing and walking over to the bed, where he sits on the edge and buries his face in his hands. There is so much to say, but he has so few words. He feels the bed dip next to him as Annie sits down, and a few seconds later, her arms wrap around him hesitantly. He leans into her, letting himself be small as he rests his head on her chest and she rubs his back.

“They’ve hurt you, haven’t they?” Annie says softly, combing her fingers through Finnick’s hair. He can’t even bring himself to nod, but his eyes burn with tears. “You’re safe here,” she continues, and Finnick knows that she’s right. He takes that fact, tries to internalize it, to feel that safety in his bones. Eventually, he pulls away from her, swiping tears from his face and staring at her for a while. He reaches up and tucks a few stray curls behind her ear, and a smile flickers across her face.

“It’s easy to pretend to be confident,” he says. “To make the world think that I’m proud and flirtatious and strong. I even believed it for a while when I was a kid.”

“You’re still just a kid,” Annie reminds him, echoing their conversation from when she was training before the Games. He can’t suppress a small smile at this.

“I’m twenty now,” he reminds her. “And you are too, almost. I mean when I was fourteen and fifteen, showing off to the country. I was… coveted. I thought it was a good thing. I was proud of myself. I wore this mask and for a while I thought it was my real face.”

“I see your real face,” Annie says knowingly, mussing Finnick’s hair.

“You do,” he concedes. “Which is why it’s hard… to show you the parts of myself… that I show them.” He’s not quite sure if Annie is familiar with this  _ them _ , but the mere mention of it causes a lump to form in his throat. “Because I love you. My brain doesn’t connect physical affection with love anymore. It connects it with money, and threats, and secrets, and…” He trails off, tears welling in his eyes, and Annie reaches out to wipe them away before he can.

“It’s okay,” she says. “My brain doesn’t connect my family with safety anymore. It connects them with… something else. Someone else. A different Annie. One who didn’t know what it felt like to kill someone, or to see someone die right in front of her.” This is the most openly Annie has talked about her time in the Games, and Finnick listens raptly. “I still love them, but it’s different now. I’m trying to learn how to love them in the same way that I did before.”

He nods fervently. “I’m trying to learn how to love myself the way everyone thinks I do,” he admits. “And how to feel like this body is mine again.”

“I’ll help you,” Annie offers, her hand resting in the crook of his neck. “You’ve helped me more than I ever imagined. Just tell me what you need. Or if you can’t tell me, I’ll figure it out.” She pulls Finnick close again, hugging him tightly for a long time, and Finnick hugs her back. “I love you,” she says, squeezing him a bit tighter.   


“I love you too,” Finnick says.

It’s the fiftieth time he’s said it in the past week, but it’s no less true each time the words leave his mouth.

“I love you so much.”


End file.
